How the world’s media reported the Bali nine executions

How Asian newspapers reacted to the executions.Eight men stand in a row, their hands tied behind them to wooden posts.

Each man has a black spot over their heart.

Twelve shooters lie on their stomachs, rifles at the ready.

The headline above reads: “Executions of drug prisoners.” No detail was too trivial, or too confronting, for Indonesian media covering the execution of eight “convicts”, as illustrated on the front page of Wednesday’s Jawa Pos. The diagram detailed how the prisoners, including Australian Bali nine ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, would face death by firing squad. It depicted the “waiting room” and the “execution room”, as well as the execution squad commander swinging his sword three times signalling “ready, set, shoot”.

The Jawa Pos, like other Asian media, also focused on the plight of Filipino mother and drug smuggler Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, who was spared the firing squad at the 11th hour.

Headlines read, “Save the life of Mary Jane” and “The last hope”.

The front page of The Jakarta Post focused on the Indonesian government’s refusal to grant the condemned prisoners clemency, despite “the international outcry and global chorus of pleas”.

It included an excerpt from a letter from the governments of Australia, France and the European Union to President Joko Widodo urging him to call off the executions.

There was no mention of the executions on website of The Bali Times, or in its weekly print edition.

The faces of the eight prisoners, including Chan and Sukumaran, were flashed on media websites around the world, including the London Times, as news of their executions was confirmed.

But in the US, where more than 30 states enforce the death penalty, news of the executions was relegated to the world pages.

The political fallout from the eight executions was widespread, with Brazil also evaluating its ties to Indonesia following the death of one of its citizens, Rodrigo Gularte, a paranoid schizophrenic who was declared mentally fit to face the firing squad by Indonesia’s Attorney General.

ITV reports Brazil’s deputy foreign minister Sergio Franca Danese said: “Given the lack of a satisfactory reply to our appeals, this has to be evaluated to decide what attitude we will adopt towards Indonesia from now on.”

Gularte, who was arrested in 2004 for cocaine trafficking, was the second Brazilian national to be executed in Indonesia so far this year despite appeals for clemency from the country’s leaders.

France has also condemned the executions, which come as a French national remains on death row.

Serge Atlaoui was slated to be executed with the other condemned men on Tuesday but was granted a temporary reprieve last week.

French President Francois Hollande has earlier warned that Atlaoui’s execution would damage relations between the two nations.

But the response in the Philippines has been one of relief after a last-minute reprieve was granted for Filipina woman Mary Jane Veloso.

Veloso had been sentenced to death for heroin trafficking and had maintained she had been tricked into carrying the drug into Indonesia, but was spared after a woman who recruited her come forward to authorities.

The Strait Times reported that a spokesman for President Benigno Aquino said Veloso was a “victim”, and the whole nation was grateful to Indonesia for sparing Veloso’s life, for the time being at least.